"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Policy Will Not Work Anymore for Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund

Suddenly the problems surrounding the mismanagement of the Dallas Fire and Pension Fund became well known to a large number of North Texas residents, thanks to a lawsuit filed by Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings on December 5, 2016 at the court of the state Judge Tonya Parker to stanch the bleeding of the fund.

The underlying causes have been brewing for long time, and over the years, they have led to a potential fiscal disaster in waiting for Dallas' City Council and citizens. The administrative structure of the pension fund is partly to blame for this mess. Although Dallas citizens contribute to the fund--based on a recent article penned by former Mayors Ron Kirk, Laura Miller and Tom Leppert, Dallas citizens have contributed more than $1.1 billion to the fund--City Council has no say how the fund is run. Texas legislature should take up this issue without any further delay in the upcoming legislative session and make amends to it.

Over the years, pension board has failed to ensure the role of a responsible and responsive custodian to sustain the long-term fiscal health of the pension fund that Dallas' heroic police and fire personnel have come to count on as their prime dependable retirement source. Instead, pension board looked the other way as risky investments have been made in real estate without appropriate vetting and oversight.

Another key problem that had afflicted the pension fund was its board's failure to adjust to a changing time when company after company had been leaving the defined benefit plans to a more sustainable defined contribution plan. The pension fund continued to provide a very lucrative plan, called the Deferred Option Retirement Plan, or DROP, to long-serving police and fire personnel, making many of them millionaires. DROP provides the employees with the opportunity to retire in the eyes of the system while stay in their job. Meanwhile, their retirement check is accruing 8 percent annual returns in their DROP accounts.

Once it became clear that this unhinged plan would exhaust the fund, the pension fund's board took some minimal actions such as recommending benefit cuts and reduction in DROP's rate of return to 3 percent. As the reform measure was recommended to be sent for a rank-and-file vote, a spree of withdrawals began from the DROP accounts. According to some estimates, about $500 million was withdrawn since August 11, 2016 through the day when Mayor Rawlings filed his lawsuit as a private citizen on December 5, 2016.

It is clear that the days of Dallas City Council and its residents to stay on the sidelines while contributing to a bleeding police and fire pension fund are over. Pension fund's board may now expect that Dallas City Council will ask plenty of questions to them as well as tell what needs to be done as long as Dallas citizens are on the hook to fund the plan.

Texas CPS Mess: Partly a Downstream Outcome of a Broader Upstream Malaise

It's all too common to hear the gridlock and bottleneck that has hobbled the Texas' Child Protective Services. The victim of each of these incidents is a Texas child whose life gets upside down due to reasons beyond the child's control. Numerous reports in recent months have been published by various Texas newspapers, including The Dallas Morning News, shining light on the plight and pain of many of our state's young citizens.

According to The Dallas Morning News account, many of the vulnerable kids removed from their families had to spend night at the CPS offices. In Harris county alone, half of the children at risk were not visited by a CPS case worker on time, and worse, one out of five had never been seen at all. Prompted by the news published by The Dallas Morning News and other media outlet covering the horrific conditions of tens of thousands of vulnerable children, Texas' three top government officials--Governor Gregg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Speaker Joe Strauss--prodded the head of the Family Protective Services, parent organization of the CPS, to work on a solution to address the problem.

Last month (October 2016), FPS head Henry "Hank" Whitman asked state leaders for an additional $144.5 million in the remainder of the current fiscal year to hire 829 additional case workers and give a pay raise of about 1,000-per-month to each of 7,087 frontline CPS employees. By and large, there is appreciable degree of support among lawmakers for the additional funding requested by Whitman. However, what Whitman has proposed will provide a Band-Aid to a festering wound, but not necessarily cure it. The additional funding of $144.5 million, if approved, will not by itself address the causal factors at their root. Instead, it's a wait-watch-react strategy that's expensive, and provides an ad hoc solution at best.

In this context, the Texas House County Affairs Committee's November 16, 2016, hearing and the panel's Democratic Chairman Garnet Coleman's focus on the causal factors such as parental addiction and substance abuse problems deserve praise. The hearing has tried to put a spotlight on a problem which most Texans don't think when they talk about fixing the CPS. Every year, tens of thousands of Texas children become endangered, or at the brink of being endangered, because of parental addiction, or substance abuse, problems. In 2015 fiscal year (September 1, 2014 to August 31, 2015) alone, according to The Dallas Morning News, approximately 8.1 percent, or 1,626,126, adult Texans had substance use disorder. About a quarter of them, or 689,803, were poor enough to qualify for free, or low-cost, treatment. Unfortunately, only 39,387, a staggering low number, of those qualified had sought help. It would be much more cost-effective and humane if the parents who qualify for such remedial measure can be reached at the first place to provide treatment instead of removing the children from the family after parental substance use disorder gets much worse down the road.

What Rep. Coleman and his panel pointed out is an upstream malaise that afflicts low-income families at a disproportionately higher rate and in turn creates a severe mess down the road, putting children's life at stake in many situations. As a result, an understaffed CPS is always on a scramble mode and the caseworkers are often forced to work on a heavy caseload, leading to missing on-time, face-to-face interviews and costlier intervention on many occasions. Our government officials will serve our great state well if they focus on formulating a strategy that aims at identifying families qualified for indigent care and maximizing the effort to provide it (indigent care) to help parents overcome the substance use disorder. This approach is not only humane as it will minimize the odds of removing the children from their homes, but also smart because it will cost taxpayers less.

Fear, Anxiety and Anger Influencing 2016 Poll Outcomes in Americas and Europe

There is a common thread running through the 2016 political and electoral landscape in Europe and Americas. Despite marked differences in situations on the ground, the common psyche that gripped the voter mindset yielded to unexpected, if not some unsavory, electoral outcome. The psyche I am referring to is the one that is borne out of fear, uneasiness, anxiety, anger and uncertainty, and immigration played a significant role in shaping up this psyche. As a result, many of the national polls this year produced a global blueprint that seemed to be encompassed by more isolationist and inward-looking viewpoint.


First, the unexpected results of Brexit vote in June. In the run-up to the Brexit vote, pundits and pollsters predicted that "remain" bloc would prevail. However, the pro-"leave" politicians and lawmakers whipped up passion among the blue collar and rural White voters in Britain who had felt neglected, and even abandoned, by the Brussels bureaucracy. To make the matter worse, the five-year-old Syrian Civil War resulted in the largest migration of people in 2015 to Europe since the World War II. British voters, especially the working class White, already reeling under the radical demographic shift over the past few decades in their own backyard, had enough, and voted en masse for leaving the European Union. The Brexit vote is partly a reflection of Britons' frustration over absolute failure of European governments to handle a swelling migrant crisis, and the right-wing politicians such as Nigel Farage had exploited the popular anxiety to deliver one of the most fatal blow to the EU. The GOP candidate in the U.S. Presidential polls, Donald Trump, hailed the Brexit vote, and vowed to repeat it in the November U.S. polls.


Meanwhile, a landmark peace agreement was reached in late summer at Havana between the Colombian government and rebel negotiators aimed at bringing to an end one of the longest guerrilla wars in the western hemisphere that had killed at least 220,000 and displaced more than 8 million people. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos displayed enormous amount of political statesmanship and courage by striking this historic deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. President Juan Manuel Santos tried to sell this deal to the Colombian electorate in an October 2, 2016, referendum. Opposition leader and former President Alvaro Uribe led a last-minute, concerted right-wing effort to rally people against the peace deal. They labeled the peace deal an abject surrender to FARC's decades-old ruthless atrocities. Colombian voters, especially the rural electorate who had borne the brunt of civil war, were leery about the deal. Unfortunately, the government of Juan Manuel Santos focused on largely urban, educated voters in the run-up to the October 2, 2016, referendum, taking a large chunk of rural and displaced electorate as granted. Meanwhile, a strong right-wing alliance of former military leaders, now-disbanded former paramilitary militia leaders and politicians like Alvaro Uribe hit the ground, reaching to this almost disenfranchised segment of voters of rural poor and displaced people--now settled in urban areas--and explaining the negative consequences of the peace deal. The results in the ballot box was an electoral bombshell, leading the peace agreement to brink of tatters. At the end, a great opportunity to flip to a new page of Colombian history was missed by a disjointed pro-peace deal campaign that had failed to persuade a nervous and uneasy electorate to vote for the deal. Colombians narrowly rejected the peace deal in the vote.


On the same day, October 2, 2016, there was another vote on a different continent. This one was in Hungary where right-wing premier Viktor Orban's proposal opposing the EU's migrant settlement plan was on the ballot. Viktor Orban and his political allies did his best to exploit Hungarians' reasonable  concern over the looming migrant crisis, and turned the October 2, 2016, referendum into an anti-EU referendum of sort. The result was a whopping 98 percent voting against the EU migrant settlement plan. However, the face-saver was the voter turnout. Since less than half of voters cast their votes, the referendum results didn't have any legal binding.


Finally, it's the U.S. presidential election that, despite all the pre-poll predictions, elected Donald Trump as the 45th U.S. President, exemplifying all the common traits of voter uneasiness, anxiety, anger and uncertainty--reflected in referendum after referendum held earlier in Britain, Hungary and Colombia--and handing a total rout to the established political order. Trump appealed to working class White voters with his populist message of abrogating trade deals like NAFTA and TPP. Trump also tapped the underlying anxiety over the rise of ISIL in the middle-east and beyond, and he was able to link it to the perceived policy failure of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Finally, Donald Trump pushed border control and immigration--especially illegal immigration--as a top-notch election issue that resonated among a large section of voters. On the election night, as Clinton campaign's one firewall after another fell to the Trump Tornado of voter disenchantment, it was amply evident that political pundits and observers not only misread, but absolutely failed to gauge, the underlying current of uncertainty, fear, uneasiness, anxiety and anger that was silently flowing through a vast swath of American electorate. However, the electoral setback of 2016 has its own sweet spot for the advocates of more integrated and mutually inclusive world. It gives them a unique opportunity to analyze the root cause of popular anger, anxiety and uneasiness and formulate a coherent and comprehensive strategy to address them.

Timing of Susan Hawk's Resignation Smacks of Political Motive

That the Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk has decided to step down from her job to seek full-time treatment for mental health-related issues deserves credit and praise. Hawk deserves our empathy and support as she moves on to the next phase of her life. As one of the most prominent public figure in Dallas, Hawk has highlighted on a health issue that we often not talk, and much worse, ignore.

Susan Hawk's tenure has been embroiled in controversies right from the beginning, and the situation has gotten worse by the day. She fired her once-trusted lieutenants, behaved in bizarre manners on several occasions and, most important, left the courthouse in a state of administrative shambles. Her First Assistant Messina Madson, working in the Dallas DA office since 2004 after graduating from the SMU Law School, has been steering the boat on behalf of her boss for the past 20 months amid the tumult and turmoil in the courthouse politics. As Hawk left last year for months-long leave to seek treatment on depression at a Houston facility, Madson was left with responsibility to explain the situation to a skeptic Dallas public.

In the contentious election in 2014 between Democratic incumbent Craig Watkins and Republican challenger Susan Hawk, many voters in heavily Democratic Dallas County saw Hawk as a fresh, moderate and reasonable alternative to Watkins, whose many of the reported public conducts were very unbecoming of his office, if not altogether unethical. With Hawk ousting Watkins in 2014 Fall election, the Dallas County residents hoped that they had found in Hawk an unbiased, intelligent prosecutor who would bring sanity, honor and integrity to DA's office. Susan Hawk was also the best hope for re-energizing and rejuvenating the Republican Party in order to offer any meaningful challenge to the dominance of the Democratic Party in Dallas County. All the hope was dashed from the very beginning, and soon, Susan Hawk became a divisive figure and laughing stock in the courthouse and beyond. Even her last public stance on September 6, 2016 that she would resign drew ire from various quarters not because she wanted to step down to seek treatment for mental health, but over the time she had chosen to announce her resignation. Had she announced prior to August 26, there would have been a process immediately being undertaken for an election to be held in November to elect a new DA. Most likely, a Democrat will win that election and have the DA's job. Many people--including political observers and common people alike--believe that Hawk has deliberately delayed her announcement to deprive a Democrat from holding the DA's office. Especially the Democrats are of opinion that, by announcing her resignation after August 26, 2016, Susan Hawk has played the game of political chicanery and given the governor of Texas an opportunity to appoint a new DA. It is a forgone conclusion that Governor Gregg Abbott will appoint a Republican to replace Susan Hawk. Now, the time of Susan Hawk's announcement to resign may have been purely coincidental, but unfortunately, there are only few takers.

Tectonic Shift in Telecom Industry to Accelerate C3 Model

The telephone industry and its landscape had undergone through an upheaval of changes in the past 141 years since Alexander Graham Bell invented telephone in 1875. However, the pace of change accelerated to a new high in the past decade or so. Now, the underlying nature of the telecom business is going through some seismic changes as the landline business is experiencing a precipitous shrinkage.

The key strategic initiatives that the telecom industry is adopting to adjust to these ever changing business and market tumults are aimed at positioning itself to positively impact and integrate the so-called C3 (Content-Consumer-Connectivity) Model. Telecom companies have begun to focus on business models geared toward veering off the traditional telephone business and driving an integrated strategy to deliver customized content to the consumer in an ever connected world. The industry, especially the giants such as AT-and-T and Verizon, is reinventing itself as Omni-channel provider of video streaming and cloud services.

How much C3 business model is influencing the operational and strategic goals of the telecom companies can be gauged just by looking at the ongoing consolidation sweeping across the industry. AT-and-T's acquisition of DirecTV and its potential bid for Time Warner are the latest examples of such consolidation that's shaping the industry. To make a sustainable and sizable impact to drive the C3 (Content-Consumer-Connectivity) Model, telecom companies need to evolve and reinvent themselves to provide cost-effective and high-quality video streaming and cloud services.

To successfully drive the C3 Model, telecom companies are most likely to pursue a three-pronged approach that is already being tried by leading telecom firms such as AT-and-T:

* Alliance-based Approach: The industry is going to pair with technology companies, including many start-ups, to provide cloud computing solutions to the clients. Since time is of essence, starting from the scratch is no more a viable option. As there are so many players with their niche area of business focused on cloud computing, collaborating with such players makes perfect sense for deep-pocketed telecom companies. On October 6, 2016, AT-and-T announced a similar such deal with Amazon Web Services to provide cloud computing solutions to the customers. For AT-and-T and Amazon, the strategic tie-up adds up to not the one-plus-one equals to two, but more than two.

* Open Source and Partially Open Network Approach: Since content is one of the key components of the C3 Model, creating rich content has to be a continuous and constant business process. To achieve this goal, telecom companies have to open up, even partially, their network so that external developers can provide contributions and feedback. While the telecom companies have to be guarded to protect their "secret sauce", they can not afford to close their network to outside developers anymore without jeopardizing rapid-speed innovation of rich content.

* Skills Pivot Approach: The most valuable asset of any company, irrespective of size, scale and domain, is its people. For telecom companies, many, if not the most, employees have skillset and expertise that's more aligned with the yesteryear's technology. As the telecom business landscape is changing rapidly and robustly, companies have no choice but to invest in their employees by providing training in the newer and evolving fields such as cloud services, data science and machine learning.

As the telecom industry is going through a top-down disruptive upheaval, companies have to formulate and put into action appropriate strategies and focused execution to drive C3 Model.

Rise in Texas Maternity Death Rate Alarming

Two recently released reports on Texas maternity death rates are truly unsettling, to say the least. The maternity death rate has spiked almost 100 percent in a span of four years. According to The Dallas Morning News, the rate in 2010 was 18.6 per 100,000 births, and in 2014, it had spiked to 35.8. The Dallas Morning News culled the data from a recently issued report. A separate, second report showed the maternity death rate for African-Americans was twice as high as White mothers.

Maternity deaths are the ones that happen within a year of giving birth, and collecting such data are crucial to understanding the level and ease of accessibility to maternal and pregnancy-related health care. The dual reports shed a bright light on an otherwise dark spot that represents shortcomings of a vital healthcare component. The reports by themselves do not address these problems other than reporting. Because of a 2011 ruling by the then-Texas Attorney-General, and now the Governor, Greg Abbott, it is not possible for any news outlet or any of the state's concerned citizens to ask for and access to more information in order to analyze and identify what has caused the spike in maternity death rate. Although the goal of the 2011 ruling was to protect the privacy of patients, it had unintended consequence by restricting any effort to carry out a root-cause analysis for any trend of adverse healthcare outcomes.

The state department of health and human services, instead of hiding behind the cloak of privacy, should immediately take on a thorough and comprehensive endeavor to find out the causal factors behind the spike in maternal death rate. It may not need to compromise on the privacy factors as much it wants us to believe. First, it needs to identify whether there is geographical concentration of hotspots where the spikes have been observed. Second, if that's the case, it needs to zero on the primary sources of maternal deaths in those hot spots. Third, it needs to assess the degree of easiness of and accessibility to the family planning and maternity-related health care there. As there is concerted effort in recent years to curb abortion in Texas, one unintended consequence has been the increased difficulty of state's minority, poor and rural population to affordable family planning pregnancy and maternity care. It's not an option for the state to stay mum and on the sidelines in the face of these two embarrassing reports.

Outcome of Potential Disney-Twitter Marriage: Customized Content Distribution

As the speculation over a possible Disney acquisition of Twitter is making the circle in business world, it's the latest, but not definitely the last, example of how technological disruptions are blurring the lines of traditional media outlet, social media platform and entertainment industry. In post-cut-the-chord era, it's the distribution play that is going to be a key differentiator in choosing the winner from among the content providers. It's no more possible to have a successful content provider to survive, leave alone succeed, without being a smart distribution player in this disruptive marketplace. In this context, if Disney-Twitter merger goes forward, it is likely to be a case in study for
(1) How successful a traditional media outlet integrates a social media platform as part of its distribution strategy
(2) What degree of personalization it brings in terms of content richness

As the cable viewership is declining precipitously by the day, traditional media company and content providers are reinventing themselves as an integrated content and conduit enterprise in order to provide a rich and personalized experience to consumers at a cheaper price. In the context of this disruptive and evolving business climate, social media like Twitter will play a key role to help traditional media outlet such as Disney to know at a very personal level who its customers are, their personal taste and preferences, and most important, key customer propensity patterns.  The granularity of these voluminous information will help traditional media outlet to create customized content for consumers. The level of customization is likely to vary by the degree and depth of information to be collected from the social media channel such as Twitter that would play a twin role of content distribution and customer data collection.

Poll Defeat of the Colombian Deal a Setback to Peace Process

As things began to move in the right direction in more than five-decade-old civil war, a concerted right-wing effort combined with a skeptical population and less than persuasive argument by the government helped lead to the defeat of a landmark peace deal between the government of President Juan Manuel Santos and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in an October 2, 2016, national referendum.

To begin with, it was a high-risk, high-stakes move on behalf of Juan Manuel Santos to open negotiation with the largest rebel group of Colombia soon after assuming presidency in 2011. The intense negotiation that has ensued over the next five years at Havana yielded an agreement on August 24, 2016. The deal was announced with much fanfare by the chief negotiators of the government and FARC, Humberto de la Calle and Ivan Marquez, respectively, with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguz basking in the glow of a successful mediator to bring warring sides to reconciliation after 52 years of an intractable civil war that had killed at least 220,000 people and displaced at least 5 million. The following day, August 25, 2016, Colombian President Santos hand-delivered the 297-page agreement to Congress and called a nationwide vote on the deal for October 2, 2016. Juan Manuel Santos staked his personal reputation and legacy on approving the deal in nationwide referendum and bring one of the oldest civil war to a logical end. In recognition to his tireless effort, this year's (2016) Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Juan Manuel Santos although his signature achievement received a jolt in the poll, with 50.25 percent of the voters saying NO to the deal.

Failure of the deal in nationwide vote forebodes an uncertain political future for this Latin American nation. Although there are many fingers pointing at the president for blame, it was undeniable that all the right-wing groups had ganged up prior to the polls behind former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. Uribe's prescription to bring peace was hinged on defeating and destroying FARC by military means. Most of these right-wing political parties and their leaders saw the very deal as the one having the potential set back their political future. They propagated effectively, days before the referendum, that this deal would pardon the crimes of FARC and provide the guerrilla leaders a golden opportunity to rule the country one day. They effectively reopened the old wound by reminding millions of Colombians who had been directly, or indirectly, impacted by the FARC brutalities--although there were voluminous reports of excesses and abuses perpetrated by the military and right-wing paramilitary too--and convinced them that FARC was actually being rewarded for the brutalities of the past. The pro-deal campaign was driven with less than persuasive logic, while the NO campaign in the run-up to the polls were driven by raw emotion, fear mongering and portrayal of a dark future.

Now, Colombia must deal with the fallout of the unexpected outcome of the vote. This is also a setback to Obama administration's policy to bring Colombian civil war to an end. Apparently the famous comment by Bernard Aronson, the chief U.S. envoy to Colombian peace talks, on June 23, 2016 that the "finish line has been defined" in the Colombian civil war seems now overoptimistic. Obama administration's pledge of $460 million a year is now in a limbo. An emboldened Alvaro Uribe and his allies will try to put hurdles every step to roll back the gains and positive political landscape that has arisen out the deal. Juan Manuel Santos more than ever needs to be assertive and persuasive to push forward toward implementing the deal. International community should provide moral support to Juan Manuel Santos' effort to end the civil war. FARC should keep in mind that what it didn't achieve militarily had almost won it without firing a single shot, and resorting to old-style guerrilla war against the state would be a mistake of disastrous proportion. Although the October 2, 2016, vote was a setback to the Colombian peace process, not all was lost. All parties should work hard, including Juan Manuel Santos to reach out to Uribe, try more determinedly to bring the process back on track, and revisit and renegotiate the deal if that's what it takes to save it from complete collapse.

CMO Roles Upended in Retail Universe by Disruptive Innovations

The traditional roles and responsibilities expected from the chief marketing officers are being upended like a stack of cards in the retail world. It's now more than driving the brand equity and merchandising strategy as part of winning the market share and charting out sustainable growth.

One of the key roles of retail CMO in the present digital age is to drive a sustained strategy that provides an intimate and engaged customer experience. Often this evolving strategy takes precedent over the traditional roles of CMO in the era of digital and disruptive marketplaces. In this age, CMO plays partly the role of a cheerleader and partly the role of a counsellor to impress upon a know-it-all customer.

Customer now has the opportunity to sift through merchandises sitting on the couch in the comfort of home, order online and get it within hours without leaving her home. In the context of such disruptive changes, it's not a hypothetical discussion, but rather a reality for retailers to take the retail experience to the customer any place, any time and by any means.

The changing landscape of the retail world forces CMOs to be innovative and disruptive, and pushes them to adopt a strategy aimed at understanding the customer psyche that may provide deep insight into how customer makes a buying decision. The recent spurt in hiring of retailers from consumer product companies to fill in the roles of their retiring CMOs is just the confirmation of this disruptive change.

The challenges posed by the disruptive changes to the retail world have created a unique opportunity for the retail CMOs to drive an Omni-channel strategy to deliver an all-pervading customer experience. It's all about an Omni-channel journey that a retail CMO has to formulate to win a new customer, retain an existing customer and help cement a bond of engaged partnership--instead of old strategy of deep loyalty--between a customer and a retailer. This is a journey that needs to be planned with an adaptable and agile execution strategy with measurable business goals.

Peres, the Powerful Voice of Middle-East Peace, Leaves an Unparallel Legacy

Shimon Peres, former President, premier and quintessential public servant, passed away on September 28, 2016 at the age of 93. Peres' life chronicled the events and evolution of Israeli society since the birth of the Jewish nation.

Shimon Peres was also the last of the founding fathers of Israel and one of the most outspoken elder statesmen in the region. His political life of more than seven decades can not be separated from the nation of Israel itself. His life--along with his evolving political position over the years--has come to epitomize the changing landscape of middle-east.

Shimon Peres has held all possible public offices and numerous government portfolios--including premiership and presidency--in a span of 70-plus years of public service. It was Peres who was the chief advocate and champion of Israel's nuclear weapons program. His hawkish stand in 60s, 70s, and 80s was a source of much of Arab indignation. Peres was also a leading voice of Israel's settlement building and expansion plan in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Many Arab leaders still harbor animosity against Peres because of his past hawkish stand, and they have expressed strong displeasure over Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' decision to attend the state funeral of Peres on September 30, 2016.

However, Shimon Peres and his then-Labor ally Yitzhak Rabin seized a rare opportunity to explore peace with PLO in early 90s. Prodded by the U.S. President Bill Clinton, Peres spearheaded an intense negotiation with the Palestinian side that led to signing of Oslo Accord in 1993. In 1994,  three key figures of the Oslo Accord--Peres, Rabin, and the PLO leader Yasser Arafat--received the Nobel Peace Prize. Since then, Shimon Peres played the role of an elder statesman, emphasizing time and again the significance and benefit of a two-state solution. He was seen as the only remaining powerful voice for middle-east peace since the November 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin at hands of a Jewish extremist.

Shimon Peres sensed the shift in the attitude of international community toward Jewish settlement activity, occupation of Palestinian land and Israeli step-motherly policies against its own Arab citizens. Peres tried to do his best to counter the adverse international opinion by constantly and consistently advocating for peace and reconciliation with the Palestinians. As former U.S. President Bill Clinton said of Shimon Peres, the beloved Israeli elder statesman was first a bright student of Israel, then a bright teacher of his country and eventually the best dreamer of Israel. His vision for peace and two-state solution will serve as a beacon of hope to both Palestinians and Israelis for their common pursuit of the dream to have an independent Palestine thriving alongside its neighbor, a secure and prosperous Israel.

Brexit Vote Likely to be a Boon to Russia

As Britons made their preference clear in June 23, 2016, "Brexit" referendum, Russia may be the only beneficiary nation stemming from the outcome. The "Leave" vote outweighed the "Remain" vote by 52 percent to 48 percent, with Londoners and more educated turning in drove on the "Remain" side, only to see an overwhelming number of rural and less educated voters--disenchanted, with mostly genuine grievances, by the Brussels bureaucracy--eclipsing them with a firm "Leave" vote.
In the aftermath of the "Brexit" vote, world capitals were shaken undeniably by the degree of disenchantment displayed by British voters over a host of issues, especially the immigration issue, with British pound taking a beating and global stock markets in the midst of a significant correction--if not, of a recessionary--mode.
However, one nation, in particular, is not likely to be disappointed by the outcome of Brexit referendum. Instead, Russia and its mercurial president, Vladimir Putin, have every reason to be elated by what has been delivered on a golden plate by a myopic "Brexit" movement led by a diverse group of isolationists such as conservative Boris Johnson, former London Mayor, and U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, an avowed anti-immigrant politician.
In the night of "Brexit" victory,  Farage audaciously called that it's a new "Independence Day" for Britain. Any political observer can see through the hollowness of such characterization as what isolationists such as Farage and Johnson have delivered is in fact a geo-political victory to Russian President Putin.
Now, a fractured Europe will have less time, and geo-political will, to deal with Russia, and the economic sanctions, imposed on Moscow in the aftermath of Crimea annexation and Russia's support to secessionist rebels in the eastern Donbass region, are going to have less appetite for many EU member nations. In the coming weeks, months and years, EU nations will deal on how London works through the diplomatic maze of Article 50 to begin the process of withdrawal from the 28-nation European Union.
With every passing day, Ukraine and Crimea will fade away in terms of geo-political importance to EU nations as they have a new, urgent problem at hand: how to handle British withdrawal from its more than five decades of deep association with the bloc. The economic sanctions, already being challenged with increased fervor by several European nations because of counter-sanctions imposed by Moscow on imports of items such as meat and poultry that have hit them dearly in the past two years, are surely going to be loosened, if not overtly flouted.
For the USA, it's a dismal outcome contrary to the outlandish statement made by the presumptive GOP candidate Donald Trump in favor of "Brexit" vote. The USA has just lost a significant voice and leverage to sway and influence the European policies toward various global issues: be it Syrian civil war, be it the mess in Ukraine, be it Russia's new-found assertiveness, be it Chinese effort to dictate terms over the South China Sea, or be it the concerted effort to fight terrorism.
Beside, one of the most adverse side effects of the "Brexit" vote will be a weakened, if not a fractured, United Kingdom as murmur of dissention has already started to emerge from Edinburgh and Belfast. A weakened UK, likely to be an unfavorable long-term diplomatic consequence of the "Brexit" vote, will affect Washington's relationships with Britain and rest of Europe dearly.
For Vladimir Putin, it's a time of Fall Fest that has come early in the summer. Decades later, future generations will look back at the "Brexit" vote, and see it as one of the most strategic international events of the time, with myopic and isolationist British political leaders such as Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson handing the most precious, lifetime political gift to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

Londoners Set Historic Prcedent by Electing a Muslim as a Mayor

The May 5, 2016, election of Sadiq Khan as Mayor of London was no ordinary event. Although the political symbolism and an aura surrounding it may be all pervasive in the aftermath of poll results, the political significance of this victory is a real opportunity to bridge the perception gulf between western culture and Islam on the European soil and beyond.

The vicious personal attack launched on Sadiq Khan in the run-up to the elections by his conservative challenger, Zac Goldsmith, and the grace with which Mr. Khan has handled it expose growing antagonism toward Muslims and how a bigot would shamelessly exploit it to gain votes. To the contrary, Sadiq Khan has used it as an opportunity to try to heal the rift. Although the campaigns before the election have illustrated contrasting political styles, the significance of the election of a Muslim as the mayor of one of the most important western cities goes beyond the impact it has created in London and the United Kingdom.

Some of the uneasiness of the western society toward Islam and its adherents was rooted in the illogical perception that terrorism is being tolerated--and to some extent, promoted--by Muslims and condoned by their religion. Instead of addressing this prime source of uneasiness in the western society through a concerted and constructive political involvement, Muslim leaders and institutions in the western society, especially in Europe, often have gone on defensive in shielding their religion and community from the baseless allegations. And, the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels have made a bad situation worse in terms of deepening the degree of suspicion toward Muslims in the western society. In this context, the election of Sadiq Khan as Mayor of London is seen as a watershed moment for a unique political and social opportunity for preventing a deepening rift to get wider.

Sadiq Khan is, in the words of Zac Goldsmith's sister Jemima Khan, "a great example to young Muslims", and many disenchanted Muslim youths in Europe, hopefully, will look up to him as a success story and role model they want to emulate and envy. In European cities, contrary to the USA, many Muslim youths live in isolation, and often work at the bottom of the professional ladders. They are more vulnerable to the praying eyes of recruiting machines of ISIL and other extremist groups. For example, the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek is seen, according to many security analysts, as a recruiting hub for ISIL.

Elections of more secular Muslim leaders like Sadiq Khan in Europe and the USA are most likely to disrupt, if not sever, the recruiting pipeline in the west, especially in Europe, for the extremist groups, including ISIL. On the positive side of long-term political outcome, they are likely to herald an era of integration between Muslims and political mainstream and the subsequent acceptance, albeit gradually, of Islam as one of many religions in the western society. So, let's hope that Sadiq Khan's election is not an exception, but marks a beginning of a throng of Muslim leaders vying for elected positions in Europe and the USA.

President Obama Should Name Scalia Replacement

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's unexpected death on February 13, 2016 was a profound loss to the country's legal community. Throughout his 30-year tenure at the country's apex court, Justice Scalia penned several majority and dissenting opinions that had worked over the years as a sound framework for conservative talking points on multitude of issues ranging from the Second Amendment to gay marriage. Antonin Scalia's arguments, reflecting what the law had meant at the time of its formulation, often put him at odds with the shifting mindset of a rapidly changing country. Justice Scalia's use of words and sentences marveled legal luminaries of all political stripes irrespective of whether they agreed with him or not. Justice Antonin Scalia came to morph himself as a conservative icon known for his originalist viewpoint, and was revered by Republicans in general and conservatives in particular.

That's why it's not surprising if Republican contenders for presidency would not like to leave the choice of naming Scalia's replacement to President Barack Obama. However, what's astonishingly shocking, and seemed surreal, when the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, went ahead of the crowd within hours of when the nation had heard the news of Justice Antonin Scalia's death, and demanded that President Obama better leave the job of naming the replacement to his successor. Senator Mitch McConnell's demand doesn't pass a single test on political courtesy, legislative responsibility and constitutional obligation. Since then, McConnell was joined by other Republicans to call for President Barack Obama to wait out the remainder of his term. Even the Republican lawmakers of the Senate Judiciary Committee led by Sen. Charles Grassley openly threatened in a letter that they would not even hold a hearing if a candidate was named by President Barack Obama. This sort of outlandish attitude by Republicans toward an important issue such as filling out a slot in the U.S. Supreme Court is nothing but a shameful reflection of their political grandstanding in a presidential election year. First and foremost, Republicans better know that there is only one president at a time, and Barack Obama as the President of the United States, has all the right--and an obligation--to name an appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. Republicans may like it, may disdain it, but President Obama has the authority to name a successor. What Republicans ought to do is to schedule a hearing, give a fair chance to the candidate to explain her, or his, perspectives and positions, and if they are not satisfied, they may reject her, or his, candidature. The process is as simple as it is. Now, many of the Republicans cite--and correctly so--the obstructionist policy put up by the Democratic majority in the Senate during the last few years of George W. Bush presidency. Is it not that Mitch McConnell, after becoming the Majority Leader, has promised to have the Senate to be run and led in a more bipartisan, bold and productive way to show the American people the key difference in leadership between him and Harry Reid? Republican rationale that it's an election year doesn't fly on its face as there have been instances in the past when a Supreme Court nominee's hearing has been held in an election year, the latest being the hearing and subsequent confirmation of the nomination of Justice Anthony Kennedy in 1988.

For President Barack Obama, it's an opportunity he must seize to put his imprint on the composition of the court, and by extension, to influence several important national issues in the years to come. President Obama should choose a candidate who has already been vetted on another appointment (say, an appointment to a lower court) to avoid any unexpected surprise. He should use a comprehensive criteria to select a candidate who is intellectually sharp, a legal luminary, sensitive to evolving fundamental change to our society and the world, and most importantly, has a record trail of interpreting the constitution through the lens of original framers as well as stakeholders of a fast-changing world.

It's Time to Limit Exemptions to Childhood Vaccinations

The recent case of a student of a Plano ISD elementary school getting infected by measles should be an eye-opener to parents, teachers, health care professionals, and most importantly, the state officials of Texas. The Collin County Health Care Services sent a letter on January 12, 2016 to parents of the Schell Elementary School in Richardson, notifying them of the measles case. According to the letter as reported by the media, including The Dallas Morning News, a student, who had traveled to a foreign country, returned to the school on January 5, 2016, the first day of the new year, and might have infected other students and staff with measles. The student was not vaccinated, and might have gotten measles as he was traveling in a foreign country. The student showed the symptom of measles on January 6, 2016. This case illustrates the risk that is posed by the scale of so-called conscientious exemptions in the recent years.

In 2003, Texas legislature passed a law that paved the way for unwilling parents to skip mandatory vaccinations for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis A and B, varicella and meningococcal diseases on religious and conscientious ground. Prior to that, the exemptions were granted only to students who had underlying health problems. The unintended, but largely expected, consequence of the 2003 Texas law was multiplication of exemptions sought. As a result, measles, a preventable disease, that was largely eliminated from the U.S. in 2000 after a decades-long, sustained vaccination campaign reared its ugly head in recent years, partly because of the so-called junk science that had tied vaccination to autism. Although negligible compared to 894,134 reported cases of measles in 1941, 667 cases of measles, considered significantly high in today's standard, were reported in 2014. This is absolutely unacceptable, and we all have responsibility to reverse this suicidal course of action. In the last legislative session (2015), the Dallas area Republican Rep. Jason Villalba filed a measure to limit the number of non-medical exemptions. Unfortunately his measure didn't get even a chance for hearing as many of the lawmakers from his party were opposed to this measure because of their so-called small government philosophy. However, this has nothing to do with small government, but to do solely with health care policy. What these Tea Party-backed lawmakers have failed to grasp that their highly partisan political stand has created a perfect storm for a health care disaster of alarming proportion with consequences that will demand significantly larger intervention by government agencies. These so-called pro-small government, anti-establishment, Tea Party-backed lawmakers should go through some political introspection to see what's at stake: children's health. Their foolhardy action today will lead to explosion in cases of preventable diseases tomorrow, and that will likely trigger a potential public demand for government agencies to take a more pro-active stand to cut down exemptions to childhood vaccination. To avoid that political embarrassment, these lawmakers should come around and stand behind the Villalba measure as their first legislative action item in the next session (2017). Better late than never.

Culture of Victimhood Proves Me Wrong on Culture of Complaint

Back in 1993, a book written by an art critic, Robert Hughes, was published that drew sharp criticism from various corners. I truly thought that Culture of Complaint was nothing but a heaping monologue of an author who was devoid of any insight into American way of life and focused on the mere negatives of societal degradation. Fast forward twenty-three years to an era of explosion of information, with world at the fingertips of an overwhelming number of people, and for many, world confined to their smartphones and tablets. I find myself to be wrong on how I have evaluated the Culture of Complaint. Actually in many ways, the book proves not only right in reflecting the popular and prevailing mood of the people, but also provides a window of opportunity for readers to assess and analyze the likely cause of frustration and complaint of people in the current time.

It's important to remember that there is a fine, often a gray, line that separates advocating for victims from the state of victimhood. Over the centuries of human history, inspirational leaders took stand to advocate for victims. Their overarching goals were always to provide dignity, honor and rights of people who had been subjugated to the dominance of others based on race, religion, color, or any other pretext. These leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela stood out to be aspirational, and always strived toward fighting against discrimination and levelling the field for all the people to have a society based on fairness, dignity and opportunity for all. Advocating for victims espouses a line of thought leadership that goes beyond just fighting against the culture  discrimination of one segment of population by another, it also transcends into a vision that  promotes hope, confidence and optimism among all the people. This takes guts and grits to move people forward as a whole, not defending one group of people against the rest. In the contrary, the state and culture of victimhood often emerges from thinking narrow and defensive. People who feel victim are the ones who are often afraid of changes that may be thrust upon them by circumstances, or other people such as immigrants, or political process. These people fear of losing their space to impending real, or imaginary, changes, and want to protect their way of life by adopting a protectionist line of defense. The state and culture of victimhood gives rise to extreme viewpoints to both left and right of political spectrum, leading to calls for building walls on the southern border, deporting millions of undocumented immigrants, imposing blanket ban on Muslim immigrants, putting up defense barrier against "micro-aggression" and creating so-called "safe space". The culture of victimhood over the time erodes the value and virtue of free society and, in an unintended consequence, gives rise to a political climate of fear and defeat.

Fiscal Postmortem Shows a Robust U.S. Economy in 2015

As the new year is flush with many prognostications on the health of the nation's economy for 2016, it's prudent to look back and assess how we as a nation have performed economically in 2015. The past year was notable for collapsing oil prices, slowdown in Chinese economy and subpar domestic stock market performance. However, the overall U.S. economy was on the strong footing in the past year. Five key economic metrics--Jobless Rate, Wage Growth, Retail Sales, Consumer Confidence and Inflation--seemed to have captured the broader economic health of our nation. An unbiased analytical dissection may provide insight into underlying strength/weakness of the U.S. economy last year (2015).

* Jobless Rate: Heading into 2016, there is ample proof that U.S. economy is headed, barring an unanticipated shock, into near-full employment as can be evidenced by a significant drop in unemployment rate by six basis points from 5.6 percent in December 2014 to 5 percent in December 2015. During this time, the U.S. economy has added 2.65 million jobs, averaging little over 200,000 jobs per month, definitely a feat by its own standard. Although many who oppose Obama administration on one pretext or other would like to overlook these hard facts and focus on the low employee participation rate in the economy, they couldn't link this phenomenon to poor performance of our economy as nobody knows if this is an outcome of expanded healthcare coverage due to Obamacare, thus obviating the need for some to continue to work for uninterrupted healthcare coverage, or renewed vigor of millions to pursue entrepreneurial zeal, or something else.

* Wage Growth: This is the real weak spot in the U.S. economy as the income of American families has remained more or less stagnant since the country has emerged from the shadow of the worst recession in generations in March 2009. The average hourly wage in December 2015 stood at $25.24 compared to $24.62 a year ago, thus making a meager gain of 2.52 percent in income gain in the past year. However, as a natural outcome of the U.S. economy heading toward the near-full employment in 2016, the nation is expected to see a brighter future this year in terms of income rise.

* Retail Sales: Since consumer activity drives almost two-third of our economy, retail sales is an important indicator for the overall health of our economy. Preliminary data show that retail sales over the past year jumped by 2.2 percent, not a jaw-dropping increase, but nonetheless robust. At the end of last year, the December retail sales stood at $448 billion compared to a little over $438 billion a year ago. Part of the stunted growth was due to falling oil prices and the subsequent dips at the pumps.

* Consumer Confidence: American consumers seemed more optimistic about the economy than most of the politicians, especially Republican presidential candidates. The consumer confidence, a barometer of consumers' outlook about nation's economy, as reported by the private Conference Board, for all of the last year, moved in a healthy range of readings over 90, hitting the highest level of 103.8 in January, then dipping to the lowest level in July (91), and eventually ending the year with a reading of 96.5.

* Inflation: American consumers for the most part of the last year enjoyed low gasoline prices, putting some extra cash for spending at retail stores or restaurants. However, these savings didn't always get infused into the economy as consumers remained cautious and made smart buying decisions, a behavioral change that had transformed the American shoppers' buying habit during 2008-09 Great Recession. The core-inflation, measured as change in CPI minus that of food and fuel, rose about 2 percent last year, thus allaying any fear of rising inflation that many economists had thought would be triggered by Federal Reserve's long-pursued low interest rate regime. At the December 2015 Open Market Committee meeting, Fed policymakers at last announced a modest rate hike after keeping the overnight federal funds rate to record zero percent for the past nine years.

Looking back in the rearview mirror, last year (2015) seems to be a robust year in terms of nation's economic health with America's economic engine firing on several, not all, cylinders. Hope that this year (2016) will be a transformative year for American economy that will eventually begin to fire our growth engine on all cylinders.